With his co-author, Senator Christopher Bond, Lewis M. Simons, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, argues that Southeast Asia, and especially Indonesia, will be the next hot spot in the war on terror. The authors propose that the U.S., having lost credibility with failed military efforts in the Middle East, deploy "smart power" -- civilians -- instead of soldiers to defuse anger and create alternatives to violent movements.

Lewis M. Simons

Lewis M. Simons is a freelance writer who won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He served as the foreign policy correspondent for Time magazine from 1996 to 1997 and bureau chief in Tokyo for Knight-Ridder Newspapers from 1989 to 1996. He has also been a correspondent for the Associated Press and a reporter for the Washington Post.

Simons is the author of Worth Dying For, published by William Morrow and Company, as well as numerous articles for the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the New York Times. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Lewis M. Simons, journalist and co-author of The Next Front, tells of how Sharia law has supplanted constitutional law in some remote Indonesian islands. The poverty stricken residents have allowed Muslim clerics to collaborate with military and police officials to enforce the Islamic religious law.